The little blue hedgehog that runs at high speeds in his red tennis shoes will becoming larger than life as Sony Pictures and Sega Sammy Group are planning to bring Sonic the Hedgehog to theaters in a combined live-action and animation hybrid movie.

In an intervew with The Worldfolio , President and CEO of Sega Sammy Holdings Inc., Hajime Satomi anwered the question of what kind of next-generation concepts they were working on with, "Sega Sammy Group is currently planning with Sony Pictures to create a live-action and animation hybrid "Sonic the Hedgehog" movie scheduled for release in 2018. Like with this CG animation production, we would like to expand our business into other entertainment areas beyond what we are currently involved."

The movie was actually announced back in June of 2014, so the film has been in the works for a while. Evan Susser and Van Robichaux are the writers, and Neal H. Moritz is the producer. Not much else has been announced about the plot or characters. Movieweb.com said that the movie will be bringing back Sonic's attitude, and will bring back other popular characters in the franchise, including the evil Dr. Eggman.

Hannah Minghella, the president of production for Columbia pictures said, "There are limitless stories to tell with a character like Sonic the Hedgehog, and a built-in international fan base. Along with our wonderful creative partners at Marza, we're looking to capture everything that generations of fans know and love about Sonic while also growing his audience wider than ever before."

Masanao Maeda, Marza Animation Planet's CEO, also stated, "Sonic has had dozens of adventures on the console and the small screen, and we're thrilled that he's now coming to the big screen. Sony Pictures has had great success with hybrid animated and live-action features, and we're confident that this collaboration will bring a fresh take to Sonic, while still capturing everything that the fans love about him."

This year is Sonic the Hedgehog's 25th anniversary, so fans should be seeing announcements being made. Sonic the Hedgehog's official Twitter feed had a Tweet leaving fans wondering if this image

was a signal of a new game coming out. There was also a Tweet linking to "exclusive leaked footage of the new Sonic movie," but it "Rick-Rolled" link followers with the Super Mario Brothers' full movie instead.

The lead singer of the band Crush 40, Johnny Gioeli, posted on Facebook that they might be writing music for the new anniversary video game, but the post was quickly removed, and the band remained tight lipped about it on their Twitter account.

It appears that Sega is trying really hard to do a re-boot of the Sonic franchise. With various versions of their video games, and cartoons- including a movie released overseas titled Sonic the Hedgehog: The Movie, it should be interesting to see what they come up with for this film when it finally hits theaters. Sony Entertainment seems to be dipping their hands into the pot of video games made into movies(see also: The Angry Birds Movie). Is it too little, too late for this to come out in 2018? Let us know what you think!